Isle of Luing ambition to build an Atlantic Islands Centre

In yet another example of Argyll and the Islands stirring with ambition, the Isle of Luing Community Trust has submitted a planning application to build an Atlantic Islands Centre in Cullipool.

This proposal was floated last year at the hugely successful Atlantic Islands festival held on the island in association with the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics which is based there.

Those supporting – and objecting to – the proposal have until this Friday (23rd July) for their comments to be received. Supporters must make their voices heard. Objectors always do. The planners need an accurate picture of community perspectives.

The challenge of renewal

Communities – individuals too – who do not renew themselves are self-condemned to progressive decline. The challenge of life itself is renewal, as that is its very process.

The Isle of Lismore in Loch Linnhe, north from Luing and its fellow Slate islands, was in this position a few years ago. A plan to build a new heritage centre with a bistro cafe, beside the old museum was founded on strong local support but drew persistent objections.

The centre was given planning consent. Its design, at once traditional and – today – innovative with its grass roof, sits comfortably in the landscape. A large outdoor deck, an extension of the bistro-cafe, makes outdoor socialising a communal pleasure in decent weather in the stunning landscape.

The St Moluag’s Centre supports residents, community groups and visitors alike. It provides contemporary facilities in an attractive, damp-proof, well insulated building. It has been a noted success for life on Lismore, with young folk confidently staffing the cafe and visitors given a sense of belonging for the time being.

This building won the inaugural Argyll and Bute 2009 Sustainable Design Award for public buildings – not only because of its quality but because of the insistent campaign on its behalf by its own community. That speaks for its acceptance and its perceived value.

Yet this building came from the same position as the proposed Atlantic Islands Centre now occupies – supported and attracting objections, many vigorous.

In Lismore, one focus of these was the assumption that a new centre would impact negatively on the existing village hall. This has not been the case. The new centre has added greatly to the island’s resources – for itself and for its visitors; and what had already existed continues to fulfill a vital function in the community.

There is every reason why Luing’s proposal should be every bit as successful and the two have much in common, including their architect.

Luing is a working island and a go ahead one. Many of those at the heart of the Atlantic Islands Centre proposal are involved with the Luing History Group and with strengthening the creative heart of the island. These are the last people to be insensitive to the nature and needs of the island.

What may well separate them from the objectors is that they are demonstrably willing to expend effort, time and expertise on making a contribution to the vital renewal of their island home.

Submit responses to be received by 23rd July

The application is on Argyll and Bute Council’s website.

If you click on View Associated Documents (at the foot of the screen) you can open the Design / Access Statement and the architect’s plans etc at the bottom of the list and see what is proposed.

Call to support the Community Trust’s initiative

The Community Trust sees this building being of great potential benefit to the people of Luing and its visitors and is asking for  comments in support of this application (Ref: 10/01059/PP) to be submitted:

• online at the above Council website address or
• by letter to: Ms Fiona Scott, Planning Officer, Argyll & Bute Council, Planning and Regulatory Services, Lorn House, Albany Street, Oban, PA34 4AR.

Note: All comments must be received before Friday 23rd July 2010.

The Trust is asking those interested to pay particular attention to the planning issues that most concern the Council:

• Appearance (design, materials etc)
• Traffic, parking and access
• Residential amenity (noise levels etc)
• Impact on natural or built environment – e.g. benefit to natural heritage by raising awareness of bird and plant life in the area

It is legitimate for anyone to submit their comments, but if you have been to Luing please mention this and give your views as to how this Centre will enhance life on the island for residents and visitors. There are currently 8 objections and only 3 support letters listed.This is the usual pattern, with people motivated more strongly in objection than in support – but it gives a skewed picture.

For Argyll’s view is that objection and support should only be taken into account by the planners where it comes from full-time residents on Luing. These are the lives centrally affected by any change. Residents of all views and interests should talk to each other about it rather than become factionalised and rather than have a decision swayed by people who visit; by second homers; and by those who now live elsewhere.

But if it is legitimate for comments of either kind to be submitted even by people who have never been to Luing, then it is vital the the positives outweigh the negatives if progress is to be made.

People need to live in organic communities that grow and change to meet the wider context of the society of which they are a part. Living in fortress toytown may be the dream of witless romantics but sustainable communities need more realism, imagination and energy.

The Atlantic Islands Centre proposal is one which would bring new life and new opportunity to Luing while also enlarging its sphere of influence as an information junction for Argyll’s Atlantic islands.

The Isle of Luing

Luing is one of the celebrated Argyll slate islands, with the remnants of its slate quarries and quarriers cottages at the two villages of Cullipool and Toberonochy.

The proposed centre includes the former Engine House, with a contemporary addition.

Unlike some of its fellows, Luing is large enough and has land capable of having an agricultural as well as a fishing base, so it is, to a degree, a working island still. Luing cattle, a cross between Highlands and Shorthorns, were officially recognised as a breed in 1965. Clams/scallops, prawns and lobsters are the main focus for fishing.

Luing has the remains of two hill forts in commanding positions. Bronze age artefacts have been discovered on one of these. There are also the remnants of what seems to have been a sort of Crannog, with similar structures also on nearby Loch Seil.

The island is reached from the main road south of Oban via the secondary road to the Isle of Seil, by crossing the legendary Bridge Over the Atlantic and taking the minutes-long short ferry journey across the Cuan Sound.

The island – the archipelago – is very much a world of its own – as indeed are most areas of the amazingly diverse and beautiful Argyll.

The origins of the proposal

The Luing History Group could be said to have been the genesis of the move to provide an Atlantic Islands Centre.

The group describes its work as ‘collating and recording historical, ethnological, biological, archaeological, geological and other related information’. Its aim is to press the heritage and history of the Isle of Luing into service for the education and betterment of the widest possible audience.

As time has gone on, the group has also brought into its remit its adjacent, smaller and mainly uninhabited islands, including the Garvellachs, Scarba, Lunga, Torsa, Shuna, Fladda, Belnahua, Rubha Fiola and other small islets.

This has created the sense of Luing as a potential centre for the islands not only within but beyond its immediate vicinity. Others with related but different interests, like the Geopoetics group, have also been drawn to the attractions of helping to bond island alliances. Here there is the lure of creating affinities in contemporary culture, with its tap roots into island traditions.

In a way, the noti0n of a centre for the Atlantic Islands based in a small island close inshore, runs parallel to creating a St Kilda Centre on the Western Isles. This is guaranteed to be accessible virtually all the time; informing those who will find the opportunity to take passage out to the reverberant island group; and giving those who will never actually see it rich insights into its history and the lives it supported and destroyed.

The arguments around the proposal

We have read the eight objecting and three supporting letters/emails to the Council’s planners and have tried to look objectively at the picture that arises from them.

Here are what we consider to be the key facts emerging, for and against, fairly and objectively:

• Luing is still a working island so, while something can be done to sustain a working population and working lives there, it should be done.
• Ambition and change need to be embraced with discrimination. Without them, any community – any individual, any nation – will become moribund. With them, indiscriminately adopted, important and delicate social and economic balances can be lost.
• The Community Trust seems initially to have wanted simply to restore the Engine House and make it a host for the historical records the Luing History Group collects; and for archaeological artefacts. There are questions as to whether or not conditions could be engineered in this historic structure that would be capable of the adequate preservation of historical documents.
• The departure fr0m this first proposal may have been driven by Highlands and Islands Enterprise, which would fund a more expansive proposal founded on a business plan demonstrating its independent sustainability.
• The community seem universally to want to see the Engine House brought back into productive use.
• The two villages, Cullipool itself and Toberonochy, already have village halls. As with Lismore – which proved unfounded, there are fears that a third and larger facility would leave these buildings struggling to survive. There is not a need for all three.
• The site for the proposed Atlantic Islands Centre, to link with the old Engine House is quite tightly squeezed in front of the edge of a deep, water-filled slate quarry. Safety issues have bee raised relating to this location – but these cannot be insurmountable.
• The number of car parking spaces in the plan – four, plus two disabled parking spaces – is said to be inadequate to the numbers envisaged visiting the centre. There are concerns in the objections that under capacity would lead to random parking in the village, causing disputes with residents. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that great numbers of cars would visit simultaneously and this place is not a tour coach destination..
• Local roads in Seil and Luing and the Luing ferry (currently leaking and out of service) are both seen to be vulnerable to seriously increased usage – if indeed such volumes were likely. Again, such a centre as that proposed is more likely to receive a steady but modest volume of traffic – not day-long surges.
• Some objectors say that they would not oppose the creation of an Atlantic Islands Centre – if it was built somewhere else and out of Cullipool. This has all the hallmarks of nimbyism.
• Others point out that such a building needs to be organic in its location – to be in what was a centre of the working island in its industrial heyday, so that visitors can absorb the original and changing nature of the place. And of course it does.
• One objector says that perhaps if Cullipool was made a ‘warmer’ place, more visitors would come and more would stay. There is an issue here that reaches beyond attitudes to the proposed resource.

The big issues

There are two: indiscriminate policy development and muddled thinking by the enterprise agency; and a fortress mentality in some islanders.

Funding as the driver

There is an endemic problem here with HIE’s position – which is very familiar.

It is unhelpful to seduce communities into having more than they really want, need or can sustain. It is equally unhelpful virtually to compel them to produce unrealistic business plans which work to show that achieving the impossible might indeed be possible.

Auchindrain Township Museum in Mid Argyll – on the side of the A83 trunk road through Argyll – now says unequivocally that it can never hope to earn enough to support itself properly – and that even if it could, such numbers would destroy the fragile structure of the little historic township the museum preserves.

It is important to focus on what can be earned and to look at community assets in these terms – but it is too often ridiculous to force anticipation of  unrealistic business volumes.

The Western Isles have massive sums of money pumped into them on every pretext imaginable. This can be indiscriminate on occasion but is born from the will to see such communities enabled to survive.

That determination – that value set – needs to be more widely applied. There is no reason why other small populations should not be supported in developing what they know they need and can modestly sustain.

Similarly if they have ambitious proposals which would regenerate a community while bringing a modest commercial advantage, that too is defensible within existing precedent, if one rarely applied to Argyll.

The Isle of Raasay – population 94 – was given over £4 million by HIE via the Big Lottery’s Growing Communities Fund, which it controls, to buy and refocus the Raasay Estate and Raasay House.

Repel invaders

On the second issue – that of the ‘repel invaders’ mindset – when we read the comment from a supporter of the proposal – that it would be better if Cullipool became a ‘warmer’ place, it chimed with what we were beginning to feel as we read the objections.

It was hard to avoid a sense of claustrophobia in a scenario where anyone visiting is observed, scrutinised and corralled into being as unobtrusive as possible.

While everyone in every circumstance needs to behave with consideration for others, joyous engagement with a new place cannot always be a silent or a still affair. There is a balance to be struck.

If you love your place, share it generously with those interested enough to come to engage with it.

If you want to repel invaders as opposed to welcome new friends, buy something large enough to give you the comfort of isolation. If you can’t afford to do that, celebrate what you have and share it. Understand that there are others who also love tranquil and enchanting places  – that is what they come to find and they will not be there for long.

And…

It is always wise and constructive to consider the other side of a debate. There may be some substance to some of the objections. If the community works together, it is inconceivable that solutions to these cannot be found to the benefit of all concerned.